


Everything comes back to you

by taizi



Category: Natsume Yuujinchou | Natsume's Book of Friends
Genre: Astraphobia, Families of Choice, Gen, M/M, Past Child Abuse, Pining, Slow Burn, Will tag as we go, bcus takashi was nothing if not neglected, natsume protection squad, nishinatsu, who knows whats gonna happen tbh
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-23
Updated: 2017-04-23
Packaged: 2018-10-23 01:29:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10709298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taizi/pseuds/taizi
Summary: In which an unsuspecting Nishimura Satoru realizes this visceral infatuation he has with Natsume is painfully obvious to approximately everyone they know. Which is largely unfair, since Satoru just figured it out for himself. They couldn't have clued him in a little sooner?He takes comfort in knowing Natsume is way more oblivious than he is. It's a cold comfort, because Natsume will probably never figure it out and Satoru will probably die alone, but at least he's not going to humiliate himself any time soon.





	Everything comes back to you

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title borrowed from [rainy zurich](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGTr1T0La-M) by the fray

Tsuji may have assigned Satoru and Natsume out of turn cleaning duties to get back at them for being chatty, in the passive aggressive way of all overly-cheerful class representatives, but Satoru doesn’t really mind. Hanging out with Natsume beats going home _any_ day—and since it’s more or less his fault they’re in trouble, he can’t exactly complain to his friend about it without sounding like a total heel.

“This is the _worst,_ ” Satoru says with feeling, hauling the heavier of two trash cans outside. “Tsuji’s got in for me, I swear.”

He can’t complain more than usual, anyway.

Dumping his half of the trash, he turns to glance at his quiet companion. Natsume is next to him but he may as well be miles away. The half-empty bin is hanging loosely from his hands and his head is tipped back, round eyes trained without blinking on the sky. Satoru follows his gaze, nonplussed.

There are thunderheads rolling in, dark and foreboding as they build up in a gray sky. He hadn’t noticed before, but now that he’s paying attention, the air definitely smells like rain.

“Oh, wow,” Satoru says, eyebrows shooting up. “It’s really gonna storm. No wonder my brother bullied me into taking his umbrella this morning.”

Plucking the trashcan out of Natsume’s hands, he dumps it for him, then stacks it inside his own empty bin. Natsume seems out of it, but Satoru is no stranger to his vacant moods—the guy zones out a _lot—_ so he simply hefts the stacked bins under one arm, grabs Natsume’s hand in his free one, and leads the way back inside.

“If we hurry, we can make it home without getting _too_ wet,” he says, all but dragging his unresistant friend up the stairs. “I mean, there’s no way we can beat the rain, but—you have an umbrella, right? I can walk you home with mine if you don’t.”

“No, that’s okay,” Natsume finally replies. “I have mine with me.”

He’s keeping pace with Satoru on his own now, but he doesn’t tug his hand away. Satoru takes that as implicit permission to keep holding it. The only sounds that accompany them as they run through empty hallways are the echoed stamping of rapid footfalls and the faraway rumble of approaching thunder.

In a little under ten minutes, they’re back at the front doors. Satoru is shoving his school slippers in his locker and yanking on his sneakers in their place, a little out of breath from tearing through the school—and glad no staff had caught them, because that would have given Tsuji a whole _heap_ of disciplinary material to work with if he was still in a bad mood tomorrow.

“Alright,” he says with a triumphant grin, as a light rain begins to fall, “it’s barely started out there. Come on, Natsume, and we can—”

He trails off as his eyes move from the doorway to his classmate. Natsume is still in his uwabaki, jacket and umbrella bundled under his arm. He hasn’t even stepped down into the entry area yet, lingering on the raised floor a few feet away, with what looks like absolutely no intention of taking another step.

“Go on without me,” he says with a smile. “I forgot something.”

Satoru blinks at him. “What? Just go get it real quick, I can wait.”

“I might have to look for it,” he deflects easily. “It could be awhile. You should go ahead though, before it gets too bad out there.”

His expression is empty and serene. It stirs something uneasy to life in the pit of Satoru’s stomach.

This is what Natsume looked like when he first came to this town; agreeable and indulgent without giving an inch, without letting anyone in. Satoru remembers the slow, painstaking work of extracting a childish, sarcastic, endlessly earnest personality from where it was hidden neatly behind a pretty face and a distant smile.

He doesn’t like that Natsume can so easily revert back to what he used to be.

He doesn’t like that there must be a _reason_ for it.

Lightning flashes outside, illuminating the room for a split second. Natsume goes stiff. Satoru takes a step towards him, frowning. Uncomprehending, but he _wants_ to understand, and so he reaches out with a bewildered, “Natsume—”

Thunder cuts him off. It stops him cold. Because Natsume flinches, full-body, and Satoru’s voice gets stuck in his throat. The distance between them inches wider somehow, even though they’re both standing still.

He’s never seen Natsume so transparent before. He didn’t expect it to be hard to look at him, when for so long he thought it would be nice for Natsume to bear his feelings every once in awhile.

“You,” he says slowly, and pauses. “You’re scared of the storm?”

The next handful of seconds feel like an hour. Natsume is silent as he dips his head in a nod, hair hanging into his eyes. Satoru stares at him.

“And you weren’t gonna _say_ anything?” he asks, incredulous. “You were just gonna let me leave you by yourself?”

The rain outside is beginning to pick up, drumming against the roof and the windows, and another roll of thunder cuts through the air only moments after the first. Natsume shudders, hugging his coat to his chest.

“It’s so stupid,” he mutters. His hands are shaking. Satoru gravitates closer to him helplessly. “Ever since I was little, I’ve always—”

He winces again at another streak of lightning across the windows, folding in on himself in time with the accompanying thunder. He drops his umbrella and his jacket in favor of clapping his hands over his ears, and he’s shaking, and Satoru crosses the rest of the space between them in a second.

He wishes Kitamoto was here. Or Tanuma. He’d even take _Tsuji._

Because he _can’t_ just leave this alone, there’s no way he _could_ , but he desperately doesn’t want to do the wrong thing. Not when Natsume is so pale and frightened, curling up into something tiny and trembling and fragile.

Kicking off his shoes and dropping his bag on the floor, Satoru steps up to join Natsume in stocking feet and hooks a hand around his elbow. Tries to ignore the way Natsume’s breath hitches, and instead tows him back down the hall.

There’s a classroom on the first floor no one ever uses, not that anyone is still around to mind them making use of it themselves. Satoru shoves the door open with his free hand and tugs his friend inside, shutting it behind them. It’s a small room with wide windows, and Satoru leaves Natsume by the door for as long as it takes to draw the curtains closed.

A fresh crack of thunder has him hurrying back with the last window left bare, because Natsume makes a sound uncomfortably close to a whimper and Satoru is physically incapable of anything else but putting both arms around his shoulders and squeezing him tight.

“How’d your foster parents usually help you get through storms?” he asks, desperate to be useful. Natsume doesn’t uncurl even slightly, but he leans forward in the circle of Satoru’s arms, leans into him, and Satoru will take anything he can get. “Natsume, hey. How do I help?”

“I—I don’t know, I—no one’s ever—”

He’s drowned out by the storm. Satoru could very quickly learn to hate thunder. And pointing his hate in that direction instead of towards all of Natsume’s shitty former foster families is probably a much safer road to travel in the long run. Even if it’s a hundred times less satisfying.

Satoru does his best not to think about how many times it’s stormed since Natsume moved here.

“Okay, that’s okay,” he says, in what he hopes is a reasonable tone. “We’ll just figure this out together, then. No big deal. Let’s just—here, Natsume, let’s sit.”

There’s a shelf pushed sideways against the blackboard wall, and it creates a comfortable little corner in the front of the room. Satoru sits, and tugs Natsume down beside him, their backs to the cabinet doors, facing the wall opposite the windows.

It’s dim and cool, and probably not entirely comforting, but it’s the best he can think of. Satoru keeps an arm around Natsume’s shoulders, and picks up one of his hands in one of his own, and tries to impress warmth and comfort and support into his cold body.

He can feel Natsume flinch with the next heavy _boom_ of thunder. He wishes he had his phone on him, so he could look up how long this ugly weather is supposed to last. He’ll sit here all night if that’s what Natsume needs, and he’s happy to do it, too—but it isn’t _fair_ that his friend should be so miserable just because he was never taught how not to be afraid when he was growing up.

“It’s nothing to be embarrassed about, you know,” Satoru tells him over the sound of the wind and rain. “I mean, I wasn’t scared of thunder growing up, but I slept with a nightlight till I was like, nine. I was _certain_ there were monsters in the dark, and nothing anyone told me convinced me otherwise. Pretty silly, right?”

Natsume makes a soft noise against his shoulder, and murmurs, “I don’t think so.”

“You wouldn’t,” Satoru says fondly. “I swear, any one of us could tell you _anything,_ and you’d just nod right along like it made perfect sense.”

It’s like blanket acceptance, given freely and without reservation, when for so long the singular person Satoru could expect anything unconditional from was always only Kitamoto.

“Is that weird?” Natsume asks. His hair is soft under Satoru’s cheek, and it smells good, and it’s distracting. Satoru has no idea why, and pushes the intrusive thought to the back of his brain.

“A little bit. But it’s not bad.”

“Still,” his friend says in a small voice, “that was when you were a kid. You stopped being afraid of the dark. I'm—I’m _still—_ “

“Okay, I’m gonna stop you right there,” Satoru says right over him, a little too loudly, because he knows he’ll get heated if Natsume says literally one more word. “You get a pass on this, okay? I don’t care how old you are. You are officially allowed to be scared of thunderstorms. And I’ll tell you why.

“Because I’ve seen you fall off a bridge before. Off a _bridge—_ like, _into the_ _river_ —and all you said was pretty much just “Sorry for getting you wet” when me and Kitamoto fished you out. That jerk Shibata showed up out of nowhere to make trouble for you, and you dealt with him on your own, even though you obviously wanted nothing to do with the guy. And there was that time in the woods,” he adds, frowning a little as he tries to sort through fuzzy memories, “right after you transferred here, remember? Something happened to me out there, and you came and found me, and carried me all the way back to town. You never even batted an eye.”

Thunder cracks outside the window. Natsume doesn’t react to it, absorbed in Satoru’s long-winded ranting instead.

“Natsume, all of that is— _really cool._ Well, maybe not the bridge thing—don’t ever do that again. But the rest of it? You have _yet_ to meet your fear quota, and at this rate, even if it storms every day for ten years straight, you probably never will. So, this?” Satoru gestures at the room at large, trying to encompass the last half hour as a whole in a wave of his hand. “This is nothing. No big.”

He can feel Natsume’s heart beating fast through the tight press of their hands. Lightning illuminates the room through the window on the far end that Satoru didn’t get to cover, casting long shadows for a few flickering seconds. And he thinks it makes sense, objectively, to be afraid of things like this. Of darkness and storms. It makes sense to be scared when you’re alone and there isn’t a light or shelter to keep you safe. 

“It’s _not_ nothing, Nishimura,” Natsume finally says. His voice is stronger than it’s been since the storm started. He wavers a little when the windows rattle with a particularly fierce gust of wind, but rallies himself and presses on, “It's—a really big deal. It means a lot to me that you—that you’re here.”

“You’d do the same thing for me,” Satoru says comfortably, because he doesn’t doubt for a second where they would be if their positions were reversed. Natsume is quiet beside him, but his hand in Satoru’s squeezes tight.

The rain is still coming down in heavy sheets, and each new roll of thunder is still as loud as the one before. Natsume is still leaning into Satoru’s side, and Satoru still has an arm around Natsume’s shoulders.

Natsume isn’t shaking anymore. For a person who can seem so delicate at times, Natsume is impossibly resilient. Satoru manages to forget that every now and then, but never for very long.

It’s one of the things he loves most about him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i blame the discord for this. there was talk of this pairing and now i cant get it out of my head. rip in rest
> 
> every chapter will have a song attached bcus im extra like that
> 
> talk to me on tumblr! taizi.tumblr.com


End file.
